TORONTO — A Canadian wanted by the RCMP after he allegedly left Ottawa to join ISIL may have been killed in a missile strike in Syria more than two years ago, according to a newly released court document.

Khadar Hassan Khalib was charged with two terrorism offences in February 2015, along with John Maguire and alleged recruiter Awso Peshdary. But the document suggested Khalib died on Nov. 25, 2014.

Peshdary allegedly told Abdullah Milton, an undercover informant, that he had learned of Khalib’s death on social media, according to a summary of the RCMP investigation, called Project Servant.

“On November 28, 2014, Peshdary messaged Milton and told him that he had learned from a Twitter feed that Khadar Khalib had died in a missile strike three days earlier in Kobane, Syria,” the document says.

“This has not been confirmed.”

Interpol

While social media accounts have claimed that Maguire died in Kobane in October 2014, the document is the first suggestion that Khalib was also killed there, said Canadian terrorism expert Amarnath Amarasingam.

“The battle of Kobane from September 2014 to March 2015 was a bit of a graveyard for foreign fighters,” said Prof. Amarasingam, a fellow at the George Washington University Program on Extremism.

“It stands to reason that if Maguire died there, his friend Khalib may have been with him as well. But, as with most things Syria and ISIS, there is a lot that is unclear.”

The allegation of Khalib’s death was contained in an RCMP report to Crown lawyers. A summary of the report was filed in court by Peshdary’s lawyer Solomon Friedman, who has asked for Canadian Security Intelligence Service records relating to the case.

A former Algonquin College student, Khalib began calling himself AbdulBaqi Hanif and disappeared in October 2014. “Death is only once, so let it be jihad,” he wrote on social media, quoting extremist ideologue Abdullah Azzam.

When the charges were announced four months later, the RCMP said there was “no evidence before us, official evidence that would suggest that Mr. Khalib or Mr. Maguire are deceased and therefore this is why we laid charges in absentia.”

Khalib and Maguire, both alleged members of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, remain on the RCMP and Interpol wanted lists. But given that Syria is a conflict zone, confirming deaths is almost impossible and, out of caution, police have been assuming that terror suspects remain alive. Khalib would be 25.

Since late 2012, 21 Canadians have died fighting for various armed groups in Syria and Iraq, Prof. Amarasingam said. That includes six around Kobane, including three Edmonton cousins and brothers Gregory and Collin Gordon.